PRODUCTION/CULTURAL REFERENCES (written 4/6/20)

-I came up with the idea for this episode around the same time I came up with the idea for "Cancel Thanksgiving." Part of the inspiration for it came from an overnight trip that I took to Washington, D.C. when I was in the sixth grade. At the time, I thought the episode would write itself due to the kids being in D.C. and me not really having a clear-cut story.

-I knew for months that this episode was happening, but I started realizing that I needed a character-based story to help ground it. I had nothing going on for the main five, but the idea of Ashley and Sanna fighting had been floating around in my head for a while. I thought about including it in other episodes, but it made the most sense for it to take place here. This allowed the main five to just be in the background and have fun instead of being given a whole plot.

-This wasn't my intention in the beginning, but this episode ended up being a showcase for the secondary characters. I already had the Ashley/Sanna story, and I wanted to include Gilcania because it's been a really long time since she's done anything on the show. Combine that with Manny and Will's roles in the subplot, and the recurring characters are doing most of the heavy lifting here. This is probably the last time this will ever happen in the series, and it made sense for it to happen in an episode centered around the fifth graders.

-I posted this episode fifteen minutes after WrestleMania 36, which continues the tradition that started in season six of having an episode follow WrestleMania. However, this wasn't the original idea. In fact, this episode was actually supposed to come out almost two months ago.

-When I scheduled the second half of season eight, this episode was set for February 16, with "Buster the Neoteric" coming a week beforehand. But at the time, I didn't have the story worked out and I ended up outlining the episode that night. I then pushed it back to March 29, but because of procrastination delays, it was pushed back another week. Because I already had episodes set up for April 5, this created a problem.

-I was going to have two episodes follow WrestleMania this year because of the delays. However, when this episode was pushed back, I decided to do what I did at the beginning of the season and have a whole weekend of episodes: One on Friday night (April 3), one on Saturday night (April 4), and depending on when WrestleMania ended, one on Sunday night or early Monday morning (April 5 or 6). But after WWE decided to split WrestleMania up over two nights, I was going to have the second episode come on either Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

-The only episode I was able to finish in time for WrestleMania weekend was this one. However, I didn't want to leave a gap between this episode and the next one, so after more pushbacks, I decided to have this episode follow the second night of WrestleMania. The other two episodes are still being worked on, and they will come at later dates.

-The episode title is a reference to the two-part Boy Meets World episode "A Long Walk to Pittsburgh."

-Sparky makes a reference to the season seven premiere "TYH TakeOver: Brooklyn '18."

-Sparky makes another reference to the senior trip that was mentioned in the season seven finale "Farewell, 4th Grade." The graduating seniors had to go bowling as a replacement for the trip they were supposed to go on, and even the bowling trip was cancelled because of rain.

-It wasn't until I started writing the episode that I decided to have Mr. Frax make an appearance.

-I came up with the SPM about two weeks before the episode's original release date.

-RK makes a reference to part one of the three-part My Wife and Kids episode "The Kyles Go to Hawaii." At the beginning of part one, Michael tells his wife Jay that he only packed the most necessary items for the family vacation, or as he referred to them, "the criticals."

-I was thinking about using "As I Read My S-A" in two previous episodes ("Tricknology" and "Buster the Neoteric"). I needed a song that would help transition the episode from Seattle to D.C. and I thought this one was the perfect fit.

-I chose the Holiday Inn as the hotel because that's the same hotel I stayed in for my D.C. trip. Usually, whenever I feature hotels on the show, they're high-end hotels sometimes exclusive to the city the kids are vacationing in.

-I got the name for Testicular Sound Express from the Family Guy episode "Don't Make Me Over." The Griffins had their own band and Peter pitched that as a potential name for it. I just took the name because I liked how it sounded, not even knowing what it was supposed to mean.

-Wade references Jay-Z's 2001 album The Blueprint being selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry last year.

-Wade's McDonald's and Popeyes joke is a reference to U.S. President Donald Trump serving the Clemson Tigers football team (who won the national championship) fast food during their visit to the White House last year.

-When I was in sixth grade, one of my roommates on the trip ended up waking everybody up because he was talking to himself near the window in the middle of the night. This is what gave me the idea to have Manny do the same thing. However, unlike Manny, my roommate was fully aware of what he was doing.

-When I wrote this episode, I was having some trouble with getting it done. I knew where it was supposed to go, but setting everything up was slowing me down. So, I decided to work backwards: Write the scenes that I knew were supposed to be in there, then write the scenes to set them up. For example, when Jaylynn and Ashley are talking about what happened at Howard University, I hadn't even written the scene where Sanna dismissed Ashley's idea. I was just looking for a way to create conflict between Ashley and Sanna, so I wrote the hotel scene first and the Howard scene later.

-Ashley references Buster's desire to go to Disney World back in "Fourth Grade Friday II: Our New Arrivals."

-I never went to a place called Big Porky's, but I know the restaurant we ate at also had arcade games so I wanted something old-school and modern at the same time.

-The Family Guy episode RK and Wade watch is "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz." That was the same episode I watched in the hotel that night in D.C. with my roommates.

-Originally, when I came up with the Lincoln Memorial scene, Ashley's mind was going to make her think that the Lincoln statue was talking. It would have been like Buster's interactions with his brain. However, I thought that would be out of character for her, so I had the two guys voice the statue without her knowing.

-I was originally going to use "First" at the end of "The Girl Next Door is Mine" until I decided "Passin' Me By" was a better fit. I thought it would work in a montage, and it turns out that the lyrics of the song actually fit what Ashley and Sanna were doing: Putting themselves and their problems ahead of everything else.

-Ashley references the way the children hear the adults speak in the Peanuts animated specials, which were an adaptation of the original comic strip made by Charles M. Schulz. In the comic strip, adults were rarely seen or heard, but when the specials were made, a trombone sound with a solotone mute was used to simulate adult dialogue (because everything was from the perspective of the children).

-This episode was dedicated to legendary singer-songwriter and musician Bill Withers, who died on March 30 in Los Angeles, California from heart complications. Withers was in the music industry from 1970 to 1985, and released several hit songs that became timeless classics such as "Lean on Me," "Lovely Day," "Ain't No Sunshine," "Grandma's Hands," and "Just the Two of Us." He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.